Freeze Frame

For the Los Angeles headquarters of on-line college resource XAP Corporation, Pugh + Scarpa designed dynamic forms to articulate the warehouse setting. The forms had to stand up to the surrounding architecture, Eric Owen Moss's Backslash building in Culver City, but an agreement with Moss prohibited them from touching or interfering with the existing interior. Defining the reception zone, the desk is an 18-foot-long piece of cast-in-place concrete that appears to hang on steel rods suspended from the ceiling but is actually supported by a tubular steel base. Freestanding steel-and-plaster ellipses—architect Lawrence Scarpa calls them "sculptural follies"—enclose the conference room and the boardroom. The former structure measures 41 feet long by 17 feet wide by 15 feet high; its counterpart is about three quarters that size. "Making the Grade," page 212. —E.C.

AC² Studio used multipurpose elements and industrial materials to stretch a $135,000 budget a long way at New York's Bar Veloce. In the bathroom, a steel beam and two acrylic panels combine to form a light fixture that artfully supports a paper-towel holder, soap dispenser, and wastebasket. For the main lounge, a 60-foot-long galvanized-steel guardrail was cleverly transformed into a sconce by slipping two strands of rope lights behind. The bar is fronted with woven-vinyl floor mats. Its top of laminated end-grain birch plywood is scored by inset walnut strips that recall highway lane dividers, a tribute to the velocity in Bar Veloce. "Built for Speed," page 66. —J.R.